This Week in Ridiculous Regulations

We’re back from a vacation break, but regulators stayed busy, even with a Memorial Day-shortened work week. After a lengthy delay, several Obama-era rules are starting to come into effect, especially energy-use rules ranging from refrigerators to ceiling fans. Newer rules range from veal tariffs to highways.

On to the data:

  • Last week, 61 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 75 the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every three hours and 46 minutes.
  • Federal agencies have issued 1,227 final regulations in 2017. At that pace, there will be 2,921 new final regulations. Last year’s total was 3,853 regulations.
  • Last week, 1,258 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,314 pages the previous week.
  • The 2017 Federal Register totals 25,666 pages. It is on pace for 61,110 pages. The all-time record adjusted page count (which subtracts skips, jumps, and blank pages) is 96,994, set last year. The unadjusted count was 97,110 pages.
  • Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. Nine such rules have been published this year, one in the last week.
  • The running compliance cost tally for 2016’s economically significant regulations ranges from $6.8 billion to $13.2 billion.
  • Agencies have published 128 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” so far this year.
  • In 2017, 254 new rules affected small businesses; 42 of them are classified as significant. 

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.